Newark Archbishop John Myers turns up at court in Bergen County

Newark Archbishop John Myers turns up at court in Bergen County

HACKENSACK – Newark Archbishop John J. Myers visited the Bergen County Courthouse on Thursday, months after a local priest was arrested on seven counts accusing him of violating a lifetime ban on ministering to children, charges that were referred to a grand jury.

The priest, the Rev. Michael Fugee, a former assistant pastor of a Wyckoff parish, was found guilty in 2003 of groping a teenage boy, but the conviction was overturned three years later because of a judicial error. He and the archdiocese later signed an agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office that barred him from working with children. He was returned to the ministry in 2009.

Prosecutors in May charged Fugee with seven felony counts of contempt of a judicial order, claiming he violated the agreement by hearing confessions from minors seven times from April 2010 to December 2012 at various churches, a retreat center and a private home.